Kaduthuruthi and 'Enlightenment'

Serendipities at Kaduthuruthi

The small town of Kaduthuruthi has a Siva temple. It lies midway between the far more famous Siva temples of Vaikom and Ettumanoor. Adityapuram, which has the only temple in Kerala dedicated to Surya, the sun god is nearby.

One afternoon, we were headed to Ettumanoor and Adityapuram and were passing through Kaduthuruthi when it was noted that it would be a while before the temples we were planning to visit would open and that the Kaduthuruthi temple was just about to open. So we stopped for a dekko.

The Siva temple occupies the crest of a hillock and has nice views of the countryside to the east - a tract of country that is, considering its location so close to a major highway and urban centers, sylvan and sparsely inhabited. The temple itself is of medium size and well maintained. Looking around, we catch sight of about a dozen carved wooden panels; they are set among the rafters supporting the tiled roof of the 'Chuttambalam' (building surrounding the inner sanctum) - quite an odd choice of display site.



On looking closer, we note that quite a few of the reliefs are of very impressive workmanship. The mythological episodes they illustrate aren't too obvious - indeed, to my knowledge, they are anything but typical among the wood carvings of Kerala. Here are some examples accompanied by speculative notes.



That was Siva-Parvati (more likely, Siva with Sati, his first wife). Mostly, the figures follow the 'standard' representations. But look at the lady's coiffure - the coils of a hooded serpent serve to gather her tresses into a substantial knot.



What you just saw seems to be a desperate-looking Sati pleading with a grumpy looking Siva for permission to attend a sacrifice organized by her father Daksha - the old feller had deliberately not invited the couple.

The sacrifice is in progress, with even a very respectful Vishnu in attendance....



Having gained her reluctant husband's consent, Sati proceeds to the sacrifice venue, riding Nandi, Siva's mount. Note how she is shown flashing a whip and the attendant conch-blowing figure - does he not look so like Triton?





Who was that five-headed figure? Brahma had five heads before Siva plucked off one of them. And Siva himself is sometimes referred to as five-faced, each face representing one of the five elements.

Sati was humiliated at the sacrifice venue by Daksha. The lady, in a fit of anger, immolated herself. Here, an enraged Siva, with the weapons usually held in his upper hands transferred to the lower ones and fists clenched, sets out seeking bloody revenge...And note the Kerala-style building in the background.



And who is this guy? He has a monkey-like face and must show some attendant. Nandikeswara, I presume.... Ezhuthassan's Adhyatma Ramayana says this attendant of Siva looks like a monkey and so was mocked by Ravana whom he cursed with destruction at the hands of monkeys.



No source I could consult - online or otherwise - has anything meaningful to say about these figures. Several of their features - the drapery, for instance - indicate a recent-ish origin but their sheer quality and inventiveness point towards classicism. Were they originally part of this very temple? Were there more of them? When were they inserted among the rafters? My ignorance is total on all these questions. Yes, something about them recalls the sandstone sculptures at Bharhut and Deogarh... but let me not go overboard with speculations; over to the experts!

Moving on to Ettumanoor, here are some curious details from the fringes of the sprawling 'Anantasayanam' mural in the West Gopuram. Quite an assortment of beasts - huge crocs, elephants, dogs and all kinds of fishes including even a marlin - inhabit the depths of the cosmic ocean underneath the immense coils of the serpent Ananta. Here goes:





Enlightenment and Entitlement

Chemistry Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, who was in Kerala as a state guest (I am told, as per the rules, any Nobelist from any country visiting our neck of the woods is automatically a state guest) to attend a conference, had an unpleasant brush with our Hartal politics. Here are some extracts from newspaper reports...

- Levitt was left stranded for a couple of hours after supporters of Wednesday’s nationwide shutdown stopped his houseboat in the picturesque backwaters of Alappuzha before better sense prevailed....The boat Michael Levitt had hired was blocked along with several others although the shutdown leaders had exempted the tourism industry ..."

- Levitt described his experience in a message where he said the treatment he received as a state guest was “not good” either for “tourism, the State of Kerala, or the Country of India”.

- "They(strikers) ignored all arguments that tourists were exempted and that I am a VIP guest of the Kerala government. He was obviously acting, knowing that he was safe from prosecution. Sadly, this makes me fear that India is sinking into lawlessness," Levitt wrote in his email to the tour operator.

- The owner of the houseboat said: “(Levitt) is disappointed. We had prepared special Kerala-style non vegetarian dishes but he could not enjoy his lunch"

It seems Collectors of two districts personally visited Prof. Levitt and conveyed the State's apologies to him. The next day, Levitt was seen on news channels saying "Kerala is beautiful.. people are nice!". He wouldn't say anything about his Hartal experience and seemed to have gotten over it.

When I learned European history at school, I was taught about the Renaissance, Reformation, Industrial Revolution, Imperialism and so forth but not about Enlightenment (of course, the word itself was familiar - as something that happened to Buddha as he sat under a tree and nothing else). "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" were taught to us only as slogans raised by rabble-rousing leaders during French Revolution - it was much much later in life that I came to realize that those 3 words summarize the very core of Enlightenment Humanism - ideals as noble and uplifting as they are hard to practice (but one should strive towards as a plain Citizen and Man, nothing more and nothing less). And I don't think I was exceptional. We Indians can claim to have learned a lot of ideas from Europe but Enlightenment (in its modern, and to me, real sense) simply does not figure on that list. So, it is a safe bet that no Collector cared to meet any of the dozens or hundreds of tourists on the other boats which were also held up, perhaps for more hours than Levitt was - and no journo bothered to find out whether they were able to enjoy "Kerala-style non vegetarian dishes" on that fateful day. This is still a land of Entitlement.